Merchants and other store owners have point of sale (POS) terminals and POS systems that can accept check or payment card payments from consumers for goods and services. Merchants typically contract with an acquirer processor to process payment transactions originating from the merchant's POS terminals and POS systems. Acquirer processors process the payment transactions and settle funds between consumer's and merchant's accounts. Online vendors accept bank and payment card payments from Internet customers and can process those payments using services provided by payment network providers, such as acquirer processors. Utilities, service providers, and other online parties similarly accept bank transfers and accept payments from payment cards using similar services provided by payment network providers.
Interaction between the POS terminals and POS systems and the payment systems provided by the acquirer processor requires software to be installed at the POS terminals and POS systems. Such software interacts with the acquirer processor's payment system according to an application programming interface (API) published by the acquirer processor. Most merchants and store owners lack the expertise and resources to develop such software themselves. Accordingly, in order to obtain the necessary software to allow the POS terminals and POS systems to interact with the systems provided by the acquirer processors, merchants and store owners may turn to independent software vendors (ISVs). An ISV typically creates the necessary software according to the API published by the acquirer processor. The ISV may develop the software in any suitable programming language, such as Java, Ruby, Python, C#, JavaScript, PHP, Perl, etc.
Prior to being deployed in a POS terminal or POS system, the software must be certified with the acquirer processor. For example, a merchant can be required to use only certified POS terminals or POS systems on the acquirer processor's payment processing network. The acquirer processor generally requires the ISV to perform a set of certification tests with a certification system. The certification tests verify that the merchant's payment platforms will be properly configured to send the required transaction data in the correct format to the acquirer processor. Once certified, the acquirer processor grants to the certified payment platforms access to the acquirer processor's payment processing network.
Because such software systems can be complex and the requirements for certification can be stringent, the cost of developing these systems can be high. Accordingly, there is a need for processes and support to reduce the costs of developing these systems and to increase the accuracy of the implementations and their ability to pass certification tests.